


World So Cruel

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Darkest Timeline, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:57:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Darkest Timeline. Their final stand on Charon goes badly. Two live: One Red, One Blue. </p><p>Or</p><p>Making sense out of something with nothing is left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World So Cruel

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Character death, illness, depression, dark. This is not light reading everyone. Don’t walk into this unprepared. 
> 
> Note: So I posted part of this a few months ago unedited (In All the Ways That Matter). Here’s the full draft. Thanks to @powerfulpomegranate for encouraging me in this sin, and @renaroo for telling me I still got it.

At first, Wash thinks they saved them all. 

It’s before they turn the corner. The bodies of pirates make him hold onto the hope for a second, let him dream that maybe they made it, maybe they pulled a miracle out of their ass one last time. It helps him breathe easier, helps him think despite their last transmission being “we might not have more than five minutes.” Before he turns the corner, he he has almost convinced himself that they’ll be there waiting, bitching about something dumb. That Wash will still have a family.

They turn. The air leaves Wash’s lungs. Because in that small room, among the pile of dead pirates and Charon henchmen, are 8 colorful soldiers. On the ground. Bloody.

“Oh God, no,” Carolina says, and that’s enough to get Wash moving, to start sprinting forward towards the nearest downed man. He pushes his way past Charon armored henchmen to the a cobalt soldier whose gun is still in his hands. Forces himself to his knees. Pulls off the helmet. 

It is only when he see’s a small hole between Caboose’s eyes that he realizes the man’s visor is shattered entirely. 

“Oh Jesus,” Grey says somewhere behind him, and Wash isn’t listening because he’s too busy trying not to throw up. Because Caboose is dead, his brain matter is leaking out of his helmet and Wash can’t do this. 

“Jensen, Bitters, get stretchers! Lots of them!” Kimball is in motion, taking charge, and Wash is thankful for it because he doesn’t feel like he’ll be able to take charge of this shipwreck that is his life anytime soon. He hears Grey’s scanner whirl and ding before she jumps into action as well. When she shouts, her voice has none of the brightness Wash associated with the solider. 

“We have three survivors! Get me stretchers and healing units. Now!” 

Three. Survivors. The words lodge themselves into Wash’s brain like shrapnel. Three out of eight. Considering their odds, it’s a miracle.

It doesn’t seem like one. 

‘Hell.” Grif’s voice is almost impossible to hear over the rushing in Wash’s ears, but he hears it anyway. “I need a fucking medic over here!” Tearing himself from Caboose (not Caboose, not anymore) is almost impossible, but Wash does it anyway. Stepping over a pile of wires (not Lopez, not anymore, just wires) he makes his way over to Grif. He can see Sarge being tended to in the corner, and the sign of his chest rising and falling causes Wash’s stomach to twist in ways he didn’t know possible. He has never seen Sarge so still.

“I said I need a medic! Right fucking now!”

Wash pulls his attention from the Colonel, and when he spots Grif, his breath leaves his lungs. He thought the Captain’s attention was for himself, but upon seeing the orange clad soldier, the truth becomes painfully clear. Grif looks fine, for the most part, besides a few dents in his armor. The man in his arms is another story.

Wash doesn’t have to look at Simmons twice to tell that the man is dead.

Carolina is the one who reaches Grif first, medkit in hand. Wash is tempted to follow her, but as she tries to tell Grif to stop shouting, Wash becomes painfully aware that he is not qualified for helping the injuries Grif is truly suffering from. Staggering, he makes his way to the corner, heading towards Kimball who is over another soldier with a healing unit. Wash can’t see him over Kimball’s shoulder, but he can see the helmet that rests near her side. 

The Meta. Haunting him even now. 

Wash steps towards the helmet. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Donut and Doc, clear of medics, hands intertwined. Neither is moving. He pulls himself away from the sight, and reaches down to the helmet, picking it up in his hands. 

“Wash.” The voice seems to come from miles away, but Wash forces himself to look up at the familiar sound. Tucker is staring at him from over Kimball’s shoulder, his lip cracked, blood dripping from his teeth. There is no way he doesn’t have a concussion. When he speaks, it is with a slur. “Is everyone okay?” 

Wash closes his eyes. He knows what he is supposed to say. It will do Tucker no good to know the truth at this point.  But the lie refuses to form itself on his lips. The truth remains painfully clear. The sound of Grif screaming makes it impossible to detach from the situation at hand.

Wash opens his eyes and runs his thumb down the crack in the Meta visor. The broken shards pierce his glove, creating a fresh cut on his thumb. Blood, his blood, seeps into the crack and lingers. 

“No,” Wash says. “No, they’re not.”

The world fades to nothing but the helmet in his hands. 

 

* * *

His name is Agent Washington and he has a family.

It’s not the best family, nor are they the best of people. They’re childish, they’re silly, and they drive him almost insane more days than most. But they are family. And they’re his.

The last time Washington lost a family, it fractured. There was no sudden disaster that wiped them all out. It was gradual, almost slow, the moment they turned from comrades to enemies almost indistinguishable. The last time Washington lost a family, it took time.

This time, it happens in a heartbeat. And despite years of wishing Freelancer had broken in a second rather than a year, Wash finds himself wishing that he had more time.

 

* * *

There is no gentle way to deliver the news.

Wash knows this. He was on the receiving end of such information once, and he knows by now that there is no way to make such a statement better. While Grey and Kimball fret in front of him about how to tell their survivors what has happened, Wash finds himself more concerned with how to deal with their reactions than telling them in the first place.

He approaches it like a math problem.  Analytical. Grif has had time for the news to sink in; he likely will be working through it when they tell him what he already knows. Sarge will be as paranoid as usual, refusing to believe such nonsense until he sees the proof with his own two eyes even though he can hardly get out of bed. And Tucker? Tucker will have shock to grapple with.

He is both right and wrong. Grif does, in fact, already know, but where Wash expects forced nonchalance, he gets nothing but an emotional void instead. Grif reacts to every piece of news almost robotically, choosing the shortest words and sentences to get his point across. Looking into his eyes, one brown, one blue, is almost chilling, and Wash tries to ignore the shudder that goes through him when the blue eyes looks in his direction. 

It reminds him too much of Simmons staring blankly up at him in the morgue.

Sarge’s initial reaction goes as Wash suspected, and despite his large amount of injuries and worsening infection, he demands to go to the morgue himself. They have to put him in a wheelchair to do it and when he comes back, he is a shade of pale that matches his dead men two floors below. He speaks little after that, his excursion taking out what little energy he had left.    

And Tucker. Tucker takes all his expectations and dashes them to the wind. Because after he is told, after he wakes up after five days of being knocked out flat, he only asks one question.

“Church make it?”

Wash’s answer is a resounding no. The chip is fried. Epsilon is gone. With that news, Tucker closes his eyes. Leans his head back.

“Killed yourself for nothing, bastard.”

When Tucker opens his eyes again, Wash can feel the rage come off of him in waves. 

 

* * *

Denial, anger, bargaining. depression, acceptance. Those are the stages of grief. 

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. That is how they are suppose to be coping. 

Tucker is firmly at anger, the rage seeping into his bones and settling there deep. Carolina is at bargaining, unable to sort her way through the waves of emotion that say “me instead.” Wash lingers in the trench that is depression, the hole so high above him that he is not sure he can climb back out again. Grif lingers in the cracks between stages, unable to commit to one at all with the numbness in his heart.

Only Sarge is at acceptance.

What he has accepted, however, is not acceptable in the slightest. 

⅜ survived the original battle. ⅜ simulation troopers. ⅜ good men that God had spared.

None of them had ever thought that those odds might not stay that way. 

 

 

* * *

 

Wash doesn’t mean to intrude.

He doesn’t mean to do much these days. Since arriving on the helicarrier, his brain has been in a fog, forcing him to work mostly on autopilot. He does what Carolina and Kimball tell him to do.  He checks on Tucker, Sarge and Grif. He fixes engines, polishes armor. He does not try to plan the funerals. 

When he doesn’t have orders, he walks. Walks through the hospital, checks on the men. Mathews looks like he’s going to make it. Tucker has made his first steps out of his bed. And Sarge-

Sarge is dying. 

Infection. There was no way to avoid it, not with how substantial his wounds were, and when it only gets worse, Wash is not surprised to find it overtaking the man completely. Fever consumes the Colonel, licking at what’s left of him in the night, and when it hits rocket temperatures, they all know there is no going back. 

There was no going back as soon as Doctor Grey looked Sarge in the eyes and told him that his men were dead. 

Wash doesn’t pass by Sarge’s room on purpose. He tries to avoid the place as much as possible, unable to see the man so quiet, so reserved. He plans on only staying to see the end. But as he walks by, brain captured in fog, he notices a man sitting in Sarge’s visitor's chair. A man who should be in a bed of his own. 

“Sarge,” Grif says and Wash has never heard him talk to his Captain like this, like he actually respects him. “Sarge, wake up.”

From his place in the doorway, Wash can’t see Sarge move. Grif’s form is blocking him. But he hears a sharp inhale of breath, almost strangled.

“What do you want?”   
He sounds as grumpy as ever, even though there’s a heavy layer of tired to his voice. Grif is gripping onto the handrails of his bed, and Wash can see his knuckles go white.

“Grey says you’re dying.”

Wash visibly recoils. To hear such a thing said, without emotion, is like being struck. Sarge lets out a sigh.

“I figured.”

There’s a moment of silence. 

“You figured?” Grif’s voice is no longer empty, no longer detached. There’s anger in it, real anger, the first hint of it Wash has heard since he found Grif shaking Simmon’s body howling for a medic. It makes him sound like the Captain he’s supposed to be. “That’s it. You just figured. You’re fucking dying Sarge.”

“It’s not exactly subtle,” Sarge says. He doesn’t sound grumpy anymore, just plain tired. Grif stiffens at that, going still, and Wash can see the posture for what it is. Rage. White, hot, rage.  

“So that’s it, then,” Grif says. His voice is a whisper but the edge to it could cut through steel. “You’re just gonna lie here and die. Like some sort of asshole.”

Sarge chuckles at that. Even now, Wash can’t predict him. The sound, no matter how faint, brings him back to a happier time, when they were stuck in a stupid box canyon, when they weren’t captains or colonels, when Wash didn’t even dare to think of a world where they could die. “Not gonna claim it’s ideal. Always wanted to die with my shotgun but Grey won’t allow it in here. Says it’s a safety hazard” 

Another pause. Grif lifts up his hand. Clenches it into a fist. Brings it back down onto his chair handle. The plastic cracks from the force. 

“ I am not here to listen to you fuck around!”  Grif is snarling now. “You’re dying, Sarge! You’ve made it all this way and you’re fucking dying! How can you joke about this and just lie there! You’ve never just lied there! When Tucker ran me over with a tank, you told me to stand up so I could die on my feet! And now you’re going to just let it happen!”

Wash can hear Sarge move in his bed from the sound of the bed sheets. From what he can tell, the man is trying to sit up a little. Trying to grasp some authority. 

“My men are dead. An old man can only take so much.”

Grif throws his hands up. “What happened to being only 27!” He leans forward, and Wash is positive he’s in the Colonel’s face, baring his teeth. “News flash, you bastard. Not all your men are dead. I’m still fucking here. Like it or not.”

Wash can hear the silence echo. For some reason, it sounds like surrender. He wishes he could figure out why. 

“Son,” Sarge says, and Wash is stunned to hear a hint of affection in it. “The Dexter Grif I knew would not bother training the day after getting out of surgery. He would not cling to his rifle like he needed it as a lifeline. He’d never admit he actually gave a shit.” Sarge takes a deep breath. “My men are dead. At least in the ways that matter.”

Grif doesn’t breathe. It was like Sarge hit him. Then, all at once, he crumples. His shoulders slump. His chin falls to hit his chest. His hair covers his eyes.

“Fuck. You,” Grif says and it is that moment Wash realizes he’s crying.  

“Didn’t know you cared, private,” Sarge rasps and that’s it, that’s all Wash can take. He runs. Get’s the fuck out of there.

Two days later, Sarge is gone. 

 

* * *

Statistically 2 out of 8 is still a miracle. Considering the odds.

Wash stopped believing in miracles long ago.  

 

* * *

Eventually, they all gravitate to anger.

It’s the only emotion they can still feel, still allow after everything. The world is too cruel for anything else. Tucker arrives there first, taking his rage like a sword. As soon as the doctors allow him to be on his feet, he is walking. As soon as they allow him to train, he is training. And if the doctors don’t clear him for duty soon, Wash wouldn’t doubt that Tucker will start fighting too. 

Carolina joins him soon enough, appearing from the room she has sequestered herself in. Her hair is cut short, trimmed almost in a buzz, and Wash wonders if she has ever had it that short since basic. She lingers in the training room like a shadow, Epsilon's chip hung around her neck like a token. When Tucker throws his kicks too wide, she corrects him. When he punches with too little force, she shouts off a different angle. When he slices through five training dummies, her silence is praise enough.

The two are a hurricane, rotating forces pushing on one another to create a wider path of destruction. Success and failure linger in every step they take, every punch. Control is something they no longer have the luxury of.

In contrast, Grif is a force of his own, separate but no less deadly. Within days after Sarge’s death, he is working with the Grifshot, slicing through dummies almost as fast as Tucker. He uses his weight as a weapon, swinging it to add extra force to every blow, to stab deeper, hit harder. What control his comrades have lost, he has gained, and he uses every last ounce of it with precision.  

Wash finds anger last. He is combing through the scrap from the battle when it happens, doing busywork to keep his mind blank, to keep from shattering. The scrap metal is easy enough to catalog, as well as the remains of the table they used as a barrier. But when Wash pulls out a familiar gun, the world becomes much less stable.

“Freckles?” He says, in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own. The gun does not respond. “Freckles?” Still nothing. With shaking hands, he reaches into the weapon to pull out the chip. He is met with fragments of an A.I.

Wash looks down at the broken chip and feels the glued together fragments of his mind break apart. 

The next day, he is in the training room with the rest of them, silent and just as deadly.

No one comments on the wreckage that he made of the supply room. 

 

* * *

Two months later, Hargrove is sent a transmission of one of his bases burnt to the ground. The only objects recovered are two helmets, one red and one blue. The inside of the helmets are painted with blood. 

Hargrove is no fool. He knows a message when he sees one.

He can’t wait to see them try to follow through on it. He could always use more Freelancer artifacts for his collection. 


End file.
